Doorknobs

Today was a knob day. After cleaning out our old apartment and officially leaving the keys, we stopped at Home Depot and picked up new doorknobs/locks for the side door and the basement door. Now, instead of stupid sticky locks, we have shiny brushed aluminum super-functional awesome locks!

You can tell how much I loooooved the old, barely functional, and ugly doorknobs.


Here, we're realizing we have to chisel a little more out of the previous doorknob's hole so the new one will fit!


In another feat of chiseling, Matt makes the perfect spot for the strike plate to rest. Who knew owning a home would require so much chiseling!!?? No fingers were lost, thank goodness. (Matt was very careful, much to my relief)


Our reward? A good-looking, fully functional door knob!



Doorknobs and locks were not the only knobs of the day, however. I decided the old, tired-looking knobs on the bathroom shutters needed updating. You see, the shutters had grown on me (I hated them at first), but they looked outdated and I decided they just needed some sprucing up. Matt decided I was crazy. :-)


The new knobs make them look much fresher (and were fun to install), though now I'm realizing that changing out the rest of the old hardware wouldn't hurt. Or maybe just taking it off and polishing it - it's kinda cruddy looking. That project will be for another day!

An Update

Well the biggest house news is that we finally have internet and our computers set up, so I'm able to post a new progress "report". Things are getting a little more miscellaneous - so I don't have any dramatic before and afters, but here are some things we've done in the past few days:

The living room, with new curtains and all the furniture set up. It's a big room, this photo shows about half of it. The room is split up along the diagonal with the seating area near the window and the media area (i.e. TV and bookshelves) along the back wall. This preserves the flow from the front door into the dining room, and helps us keep a cozy feeling in the big room. I did just buy some felt pads so we can get rid of the bulky carpet squares currently protecting the floors.


Matt painting the office walls. The walls are grey and the ceiling is sky blue (oh how I love the sky blue ceiling). We're going to get a big white shelving unit and paint the backs of the shelves a bright yellowish green as an accent color.


One of my favorite things Matt's accomplished so far - getting some coffee roasted! Now I can enjoy amazing coffee at home while typing this blog entry.


Yesterday the shower doors came down and this shower curtain went up! The icky door frame is solidly attached to the tub, but we'll put another curtain in front of the tub to hide it! We have a curtain we like already, but I saw this PHOTO shower curtain at Target and I must find where I can get my own made. It's too awesome. I do so love the tiled shower ceiling, but I think eventually we may need to do some updating in here. Anyone know how to get badly grouted ancient soap dishes off tile??


And finally, here's the office with our desks! We still have to get to Ikea for the shelving unit, but it's getting there. Sadly, the room is too shadowed in this shot for you to see the awesome blue ceiling very well. This shot also showcases my delicious coffee and greek yogurt (with honey and blueberries) breakfast - mmm.

Tackling the Floors

Today my parents and my younger sister came to help us out with the house. We were really glad they did, as we had floors to refinish in four rooms! We'd already pulled the carpet (and associated nails and staples) up in the master bedroom, so one team got started sanding that room down while the rest of us went from room to room ripping up carpets and padding and nails and staples. It was tiring work, but many hands did make it much lighter! We were pleasantly surprised that we got all of the floors sanded down and still had half an hour to spare before the sander had to be back to the hardware store. We even had time to apply the first coat of water-based floor finish (not polyurethane, can't remember the exact name, something about acrylic). Here are some pics, though sadly no shots of the girls working hard on the carpet removal, I guess we were pretty busy and the camera wasn't on-hand. I'm rapidly finding that, while I do have energy to post, I don't have much energy to touch up the photos. So, I hope you don't mind the wierd flash shadows and off-kilter lighting too much!

Since the room featured in the pics is the living room, here are some befores:





And, the afters:

My dad doing the rough sanding in the living room.


Matt taking a turn with a finer grit.


The living room floor after the first coat of finish! There are some really neat color variations in the wood, the photo doesn't do them justice.

Master Bedroom/Pink Bathroom

No time to color-correct these photos after the our long day, but they'll give you an idea of how the past few days went!

The pink bathroom, now with it's shelf and orchid in place. The Roman blind was installed a day after, once I finally remembered to measure the window. We plan to change out the hardware on the sink eventually, but for the time being the pink bathroom is done (aside from a good grout cleaning)!





We also tackled the master bedroom, now that Matt's back from his business trip!

Before (with the seller's things)


After the first coat of paint was finished. It's a shade of tan that will match the tapestries we plan to hang over the bed as a canopy. The ceiling is whiter than it looks in this picture, the same as the bathroom ceiling.


Carpet removal!


Awesome wood floors revealed! They're in excellent condition. They'd look fine if we just washed them, but we will sand and polyurethane them to protect them.

Pink Bathroom

The first room I tackled was the pink bathroom. Yes, we have one of those lovely pepto-bismol pink bathrooms popular in the 50s and 60s. At first, it was just completely unbearable, but now I've added a coat of brown paint, and already the pink looks better! Just wait 'til I add the decor! I have big plans for this little room :-)

BEFORE (sadly, this is the best picture I have of the before)


DURING (colors are pretty darn close but not exactly true to life - the room you see in the mirror is not green at all, not sure why it looks like it is. wall color is Behr "Melted Chocolate")


AFTER coming soon!

The Starting Point

I'm going to use this blog to chronicle our experiences as first time homeowners. We'll see if I can keep up with home renovations and blogging at the same time!

Here's where we're starting from (photos with sellers things still in the house):

Our New House